Over the past 20 years or so, film festivals have beget more film festivals like rabbits on alkyl nitrates...

...Of all the chatter about how festivals can save independent film, why don't any of the festivals seers implement the most obvious solution? Pay the fucking filmmakers. Let's call it the 35% rule: 35% of earned revenues at film festivals should go directly back into the pockets of filmmakers. It's not an arbitrary number. Typically this is the percentage of gross box office revenues (though it's often higher) which are remitted to the rights holders in the theatrical market.

The contemporary international film festival circuit is, primarily, an exhibition circuit. Hoity-toity notions of curatorial independence and prestige rapidly break down when one analyzes the way films flow from the major festivals through the speciality and B-level fests down to the smallest of local events. For example, over 85% of the documentaries that premiered at Sundance 2012 went on to play five or more film festivals. Several played more than 20 festivals. That's exhibition, not curation....

After surprising users by completely banning adult content on a blogging platform previously committed to freedom of expression, Google has done another volte-face and rolled back their draconian policy.

Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, an organization devoted to encouraging self-esteem in young girls (“change the world by being yourself” is their very Leslie Knope-like motto) joined in for this year’s Golden Globes — the obvious tie-in being that Poehler co-hosted with Tina Fey — and spread the hashtag through their own accounts. It was a hit with their audience, so Smart Girls continued with the SAG Awards and the Grammys. According Alee-a Blanco, social media director of Smarts Girls, from January 19, the week after the Golden Globes, to today, there have been 2.5 million impressions of #AskHerMore across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Facebook’s plot for ad domination is coming to fruition. Today at Facebook headquarters, its ad execs explained how two years of seemingly isolated launches and acquisitions are melding into a powerful way to show ads across the Internet and track the purchases they inspire both online and offline.

Here’s how the pieces come together:

Facebook brings its 1.35 billion users and massive engagement with the News Feed where it shows its ads. Because its huge user base stays logged in across web and mobile, it has a unified understanding of people’s identities in a way most platforms don’t. Facebook’s wealth of personal data means it can target ads more accurately. For instance, it says it can target gender with 90 percent accuracy compared to the online ad industry average of 50 percent.

SnapChat, another ephemeral application, is the fastest-growing social app heading into 2015. With a user base 100 million active users, 60% of whom engage with the app 22 times per day, Snapchat represents another dark social platform that should be considered in 2015. This is especially true with the upcoming strategic partnership model that will incorporate multiple media outlets into the platform. This will convert the experience to include more content from external networks and publishing partners.

The multi-instrumentalist and composer will write a song a day from 23 February for a week about a different Guardian news story. Here, he talks about optimism in the face of world horrors, sibling rivalry and his debut solo album, Policy

The business of heroes needs saving from the crushing weight of its own data. The Marvel team thinks they’ve built a solution: a massive database that uses graph theory to give fans a simple take on characters that span comics, movies, and video games.

Wow. Just wow. The physical representation of the Marvel universe's characters... is absolutely breathtaking. Visually, it's just... wow. I know, but hell, is there any other word for it? Graphed out, it actually looks like a Universe; or well, a Miniverse, --the complexity of the Universe itself is infinite, the complexity of the Marvel Universe is finite, --and this is just one of the stunning graphics you can see on the source.

Some of the other visual graphics for the Marvel universe are multicolored, but... phew. I want this in my house. Like, as a giant mural, covering one wall; do you think if it was blown up against one big wall, you could see all the characters and names? All their relationships? My ex-husband would stare at something like that for hours, and most likely, go into serious nerd overload. He might even have a seizure. The Marvel universe is... beautiful.

The app will ship with content from Jim Henson TV, DreamWorks, Mother Goose Club, and National Geographic, as well as a variety of high-profile YouTube stars. Strict rules for advertising could come between brands and kids. It's not clear whether YouTube will use its traditional advertising model or product placement. Google recently amended its advertising policy on YouTube to prohibit video overlays of sponsor logos and product branding unless the sponsor buys advertising.

Students using the hashtag #closeFCPS expressed their outrage at having to report to class on time in the hazardous conditions. They also became real-time weather reporters by posting videos and photos of snow conditions, roadways and accidents.

"A company called Elemental Path is developing a new line of smart toys for children which will be powered by the super computing system IBM Watson, enabling the toys to engage in real and personalized conversations with kids, and evolve with the child as he or she grows. CogniToys, as the toy line is being called, is today introducing its first entry into this space, with a smart dinosaur toy that supports full speech recognition and can chat with kids, tell them jokes and answer a wide variety of “who,” “when,” “where” and “why” questions..."

There was a great disturbance in the Force this week as George Lucas announced he's locating his new art museum in Chicago instead of San Francisco. But Lucas's art isn't all Millennium Falcon models: There are some seriously fascinating pieces in his collection, all themed around the concept of storytelling.

Future Unfolding is a new game by Berlin based game studio Spaces of Play. It is a role playing game where each play-through allows you to experience a new and different layout and find your own way to the goal.

MTV today announced an expansion of its Look Different anti-bias campaign called #TheTalk, a multiscreen effort to encourage its audience to have candid, confident and “color brave” conversations on race

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